Hi, I'm doing my master dissertation. My research aims to investigate how individual factors (intrinsic motivation, paradox mindset, task significance, resource available, proactive personality) in total five independent variables impact employee creativity mediated by unlearning(the process employees abandon old out-dated knowledge and skills to learn new ones).
I'm thinking some problems might result in the failure of mediation test. And I will really appreciate it that anyone could give me some advice if the problems I found were rehank you!
1. Sample size
The sample size is about 107, will the sample size be too small? For for each variable, I have items from 3-17. More detail shown in the following with Cronbach's alpha.
IVS:
Intrinsic motivation: 5 items
Cronbach's alpha: .888
paradox mindset: 9 items
Cronbach's alpha: .873
task significance: 4 items
Cronbach's alpha: .724
resource available: 6 items
Cronbach's alpha: .837
proactive personality: 17 items
Cronbach's alpha: .959
Mediator:
unlearning: I have two questions designed for unlearning.
The first question includes 11 items and I did reverse coding of 6 items.
Cronbach's alpha: .350
The second question includes 5 items and I did reverse coding of 2 items.
Cronbach's alpha: .389
DV:
creativity: 9 items
Cronbach's alpha: .905
All the items and scale were adopted from previous scholar's article.
2. Model fit and construct
The attachment is my data output by doing Confirmatory factor test. My model fit is not good.
3.Too much independent variables
And thank you anyone who could give me some advice on how could fix the current situation.
Thanks!
With that kind of sample size your design is under-powered. In addition, the alphas for your mediators are very low. I would verify the dimensionality of both your independent variables and your mediators to try to reduce their numbers if you can. You may want to consider Clustering or Profile Analysis to see whether your predictors may be better represented as qualitatively distinct levels. If might be easier to run a mediation analysis with less variables.
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